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The Ebon Ward: Episode 5
"There is nothing innately weird about writing in pie lore." - Twitch description for the 5th episode of Ebon Ward Episode Synopsis The party stays the night at the Verger mansion, where Eugene Verger gives them a tour of his study and the various cursed items contained within. They accidentally release an Arcanoplasm and help Verger wrangle it back into submission. Next morning the party continues the investigation in town where Maze and Gnash buy a breakfast pie, everyone loses their minds interrogating brothel workers, and the trail leads to a fight breaking out with two suspicious individuals at the potions shop. Summary The party begins at the Graveyard where they ended the previous session investigating some footprints that lead in the direction of the Verger mansion. It is past midnight, but they decide to visit the mansion and invite themselves to stay the night. They meet with Eugene in his study and discuss the platinum mask that Bevis had told them to retrieve, proposing to give the Underhand other cursed items instead of the mask (and in fact receiving a non-cursed silver half-mask that they hope will trick the Underhand). Just as Verger is explaining how his captive Arcanoplasm works to dampen curses within the study, Gnash fumbles into its glass tank and secret combat is triggered when the glass cracks and the surrounding runes are disturbed. The party works to distract the Arcanoplasm long enough for Dia and Verger to repair the runes for the cursed sleep circle that normally keeps the Arcanoplasm dormant. Meanwhile, Jasper - who had jumped out a window when the Arcanoplasm awoke - reenters the house through the cellar which leads to the kitchen, and receives a set of house keys from Castien so that they can unlock the door to the study and rejoin the party. Jasper enters the room to find half of the party passed out from the reactivated sleep spell and helps Suino and Eugene wake them up. In the aftermath, Maze and Suino again propose to Verger that they take some of the cursed items off his hands to use on the Underhand, which he finds a puzzling request considering most of his collected cursed items are generally either "dangerous and/or flat out weird". For example, Verger gives Maze the "Stick of Boo-Boos", which will hit a person in the face for a small amount of negative energy damage. Maze insists that in return Verger should take the encoded book from Belgrin, from which Verger recognizes the Veredis symbol and comments that he believes that the platinum mask had also come from some Veredis ruins. He explains that the mask was given to him 2 weeks ago by a lady doctor from Central who drops by sometimes to meet with Sebastian, a lady who wears a lot of red and refers to herself as "The Good Doctor". To explain again why he cannot give the party the platinum mask, Verger describes that magic items are inanimate but curses are "basically alive" and that is why strong curses are so dangerous. Cursed items of the relatively weak and quirky variety are distributed to the party members. The party members test out the cursed items and shenanigan around the other members of the household before heading to their rooms to sleep for the night. Jasper snoops around during the night and sees a hooded man leaving the mansion and venturing into the stormy night. They send out some insect scouts which report back findings of a trail of footprints leaving the mansion, but decide to wait until morning to investigate with the rest of the party. In the morning, the party skips breakfast and follows the footprint trail to just outside of Sebastian's window. They hassle him for a while before Suino uses scent tracking to pick up the trail and follow it towards town. They eventually reach the end of the trail at a crossroads, where Jasper speaks with a nearby tree to discover that actually there were 3 cloaked individuals who met at this spot in the night: the man from the mansion and two other people who wore a white and black cloak, respectively. Suino picks up a new scent from a dropped cigar which leads back into the town of Grabby's Reach. Enroute, Maze and Gnash meet a pie seller from The Society and purchase the best pie they've ever had. Dia helps Jasper to acquire a bell from the town crier, Dobias Teeterman. The trail leads the group to the Naughty Lady. Inside the Naughty Lady brothel, Suino strikes up a conversation with Gina Stevenson (related to bandit Archer Stevenson), who smells most strongly of the cigar, and learn that she spent the night with the black cloak man. Meanwhile, Dia and Jasper talk to barman Castillus Gorgeouso and another man who point them in the direction of twins Bronze and Brawns, the brothel workers who spent the night with the white cloak man. Altogether, they learn that the white cloak and black cloak man are regulars who stop by the brothel together once a month, and also only left about 30 minutes ago after mentioning something about "resupplying". Suino also receives from Gina a glass bottle lighter belonging to the black cloak man, which she uses to pick up a fresh scent. The fresh trail leads to the town potions shop "Wow Potions!" where they catch up to the black and white cloak men. Suino instructs Maze to lock the door behind them as the group walks in and engages the two men in casual conversation (mostly about how frustratingly slow the potionseller is being) as they spread out and ready for combat. The black and white cloak men, named "Killstain" and "Rufus", sense that something is up and Killstain starts a fight by swinging at Suino. A combat follows in which tables are broken, lightning is called down to strike the shop, and the ancient potionseller wanders around obliviously in the background attempting to fill the orders. Combat ends when Rufus is knocked out by Suino and Maze follows his murderous instincts to behead Killstain with his spiked chain (amidst alarm from everyone in the party except for Gnash). Suino argues that Killstain should have been left alive at least long enough to question, as he seemed to be the leader of the two. Gnash and Maze search Killstain's body and find a receipt addressed from "The Good Doctor" that indicates 2000 gold payment for transportation and delivery of some goods, and message of appreciation for information that has helped to "speed up the transmutation process". Both men are also found to have a silver pocketwatch with the initials "TT" arranged like a logo, which Dia identifies as being the sigil of Toter Tobbles. The party realizes that they have probably drawn too much attention to the shop and will need to carry off Rufus to somewhere secluded for further questioning. Maze grabs Killstain's head and hands it to Gnash to take with them for intimidation purposes. While Dia and Gnash distract a group of approaching guards by acting as harmless witnesses, the rest of the party sneaks around the back and to the outer wall of Grabby's Reach with the unconscious Rufus. Maze breaks off to distract the guards at the gate, allowing Suino and Jasper to carry Rufus through and make their way towards the graveyard. Appearances * Ebon Ward Party (Maze, Suino, Jasper, Dia, Gnash) * Eugene Verger * Castien and Heiqen * Matilda, Evelyn and Sebastian Verger * Mysterious Pie Seller (first appearance) * Rufus and Killstain (first appearance) Notes & trivia * The names "Rufus" and "Killstain" are a reference to Maze's two dogs "Ruckus" and "Killbane" who he acquired in a pre-stream session and left at Ebon Ward Central before the Belgrin mission. * Cursed items obtained: ** Jasper: "Belt of the Uncooperative Snake", "Broom of Animated Attack" ** Dia: "Boots of Dancing", a choker with images of talking heads ** Maze: "Stick of Boo-boos", "Tongue of Tears" ** Gnash: "Lighthouse Goggles" ** Suino: "Paralysis Perfume" * It is noted that Suino recognizes Sebastian's scent from one of the sets of footprints at the graveyard, though he does not match the scent that they are currently tracking. * When Jasper speaks with the tree it is established that trees are colour blind (thus the tree could not tell them whether any of the cloaked individuals was wearing a red cloak) * Toter Tobbles was the other individual that the Duchess had indicated to have the materials that the group needs. Category:Ebon Ward Category:Ebon Ward Episodes